SEXIS WRONG

Learning long ago that the secret to printing money is to
keep your presses running 24/7/365, Marvin took work from
whomever, wherever. There is evidence that he printed books
for pornographer Reuben Sturman, based in Cleveland. 14 He
printed for notorious Gambino family associate Robert “Di B”
DiBernardo of Star Distribution in New York. 15 And he printed
magazines and books for “Jules Griffon,” pseudonym of Edward
S. Sullivan, a journeyman porn editor-publisher, owner
of Jules Griffon Enterprises, a publisher of skin mags and
erotic paperbacks that operated under the imprint Classic
Publications. 16
You can tell a lot about a publisher by the quality of his production.
“He prints the shoddiest books of all of us,” says Brian
Kirby, 17 famed editor of 1960s porn-magnate Milton Luros’
Essex House imprint, and truer words have never been spoken.
To say the stock Marvin used for his books was suitable
only for bathroom hygiene would ignore toilet paper’s prime
requisites: that it not chafe your ass and crumble while in use.
Marvin used ground pulp, the lowest-grade paper available
and high in acids; as soon as it’s exposed to oxygen, it begins
to brown, practically before your eyes.
Marvin was, to put it mildly, parsimonious. He not only refused
to pay his debts on principle, he bounced a check to his
star witness for the defense, Carolyn See, who, as a PhD in
English literature, provided the requisite redeeming social value
during his obscenity trials. (At the time, providing redeeming
social value in obscenity trials had become something of
a cottage industry for scholars.) Marvin called her “venal” for
insisting that he make good on the check. She threatened
to provide redeeming social value for the D.A. He sent her
another check, this one good.
Perhaps experience as a turn-around whiz taught him that
the best way to run a company was on a shoestring, keeping
operating expenses to a bare minimum. He was a one-man
band. He worked out of his house, a comfortable suburban
tract home in Covina, east of Los Angeles. Woke up every
morning at four, edited manuscripts and texts all by himself
before dropping them off at the printer.
In his APS/Marvin Miller Enterprises venture, Marvin distributed
through John F. Hayes’ Kable News of Cleveland and New
York. Periodicals distributors are pretty sharp operators, and
it appears that Marvin met his match—or Kable News theirs.
The two parties soon locked in a virulent fight over $600,000
in receipts. Miller appears to have decided that he couldn’t
trust distributors anymore, not an irrational conclusion. So,
while continuing to move mountains of books through established
distributors like East Coast-based Al Druss’ G.I. Distribution
and Robert DiBernardo’s Star Distribution, 18 his friend
Art Kunkin reports 19 that Marvin maintained a long list of independent
distributors all over the country handling his stuff,
including the legendary Shelley Wilson of New York, a “cigarsmoking,
tough as nails, fun, good-time gal” 20 who had the
moxie to stand up to wiseguys who tried to mess with her.
Marvin loved mail-order distribution, soliciting, and fulfilling
all orders in-house, no middleman. He would send four employees
to the post office to pick up orders, one to take them
out of the post office box, the other three to keep an eye on
the first and each other. He claimed to have movie stars, politicians,
professionals, even the mayor of a large Western city
on his mailing list. On this, we can probably take his word, for
porn had become somewhat hip, and—though it may come
as a shock to the innocent—even politicians have secret sexual
desires, and, gee willikers, tend to be hypocritical about
them.
Just because Marvin issued cheaply produced, cheesy editions,
don’t think that he didn’t reprint some truly outstanding
or unusual material aside from his Olympia Press knock-offs.
Not that he had any idea what he was doing. He issued The
Sixty-Niners, an offset-photo reprint (natch!) of a Continental
Classics photo-reprint, their retitled edition of Queenie, a portion
of a longer Victorian work known as The Adventures of
Lady Harpur. Shortly thereafter, Marvin issued Queenie by
THE MAN WHO SCREWED THINGS UP 241